LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

©!?;;{!, P^pit^t'fo. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. . 



A 



THE 



FORTRESS 



REBELLION: 

WITH A BRIEF 

VINDICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 



-- k 



BY 0. R. L. i 6rOZIER. 



" Not that I loved Cesar less, but that I loved Rome more." 



SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 



3 J 5S 



GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN. 
1 864. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 
0. R. L. CROZIER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Western District of Michigan. 



PRICE : 



Ten cents single copy — $5 00 per hundred. 
For gratuitous distribution, $3- 00 per,hundred. 






PREFACE 



The present year is charged with duties such as 
no other year has been. Our nation is to crush the 
most monstrous rebellion known to history ; x and, at 
the same time, elect a Chief Magistrate, involving, 
perhaps, an entire change of the national policy. 
The task will be easily and honorably performed if 
we address ourselves to it with the steady courage of 
intelligent freemen. The nation wants faith in itself 
— in its principles, and in its ability to sustain them. 
Let us do bravely right, and the God of justice will 
give us victory. That the following pages may con- 
tribute somewhat toward these ends, is the desire 

of their 

Author. 

Grand Eapids, Mich., February, 1864. 



SENTIMENT PROPOSED. 

Will the reader please allow me to suggest, as 
our abiding and controlling sentiment : 

Our Country, with its Institutions of Freedom, 
against all its enemies from within or from with- 
OUT ! a blessing of priceless value to man, the de- 
fense of which, with any amount of treasure or life it 
may cost, is the undoubted duty of every one who 
finds protection under its noble banner ; that against 
the folly, or imbecility, or crime of any and all men, 
in high or low places, that shall seek or tend to jos- 
tle it from the foundations on which our fathers placed 
it, we will steadily oppose whatever of influence or 
power we possess ; that these foundations are the 
Inalienable Rights of all men to " Life, Liberty, and 
the Pursuit of Happiness ;" and that whoever will 
repair our shattered Government on these founda- 
tions — whatever his party relations or antecedents — 
shall have our hearty support. 



THE FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 



THE CAUSE. 

During the first year of the war, few stated its 
cause alike. Now there is no difference of opinion. 
All admit that slavery was its cause, an admission 
which our pride of consistency and our craven vas- 
salage to the slave power would not allow us to 
make, until we had been compelled to measure 
swords with that power and had found ourselves its 
superior. Having fondled it in the lap of state, until 
its humored ambition arrogated to itself our entire 
purse and authority, and had slapped us in the face 
for our refusal, it was natural that we should seek to 
cover our folly with various excuses for its imperti- 
nence. There being, at length, an agreement as to 
the cause of the war, let us look at 

THE SOURCE OP OUR ERROR. 

" wad some power," Ac. 

Slavery, to reach its purpose, could not appear as 
first cause ; but wilily thrusting the Federal Consti- 
tution between itself and the American people, it 
enshrined its ugliness in the sacred reverence we 
bear for the founders of our Government ; and dema- 



6 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

gogues were not wanting, either in pulpit or forum, 
to affirm, on the authority of Paul and Black- 
stone, that the ass was a real lion / Taking advan- 
tage of our respect for law and order, and the gen- 
eral ignorance of the constitution, the deception was 
easy. As long ago as nullification times, the priests 
of slavery found it necessary to provide against a 
national conscience and the nimble energies of free- 
dom. Hence the doctrine of the Calhoun school : 

That the constitutional guaranties of state rights ivere 
such as to forbid the interference of the General Govern- 
ment ivith slavery in the states / 

This doctrine, conceived in treason and promul- 
gated on purpose to make slavery perpetual and dom- 
inant in the nation, soon crystalized into a national 
policy. Politicians swore by it ; political conven- 
tions built their platforms on it ; political editors, of 
every party hue, wrote gravely in its defense ; 
and, imbued with it, the whole Government went 
down in abject service to the slave power. We 
meekly forgot that we had any "Southern brethren" 
besides the lords of the whip, the bludgeon, the 
bowie knife, and the revolver — the whippers ot 
women and the sellers of babies — and, as a fraternal 
duty, deferred to them in their grasping demands ; 
shut our ears against mercy, truth, justice, and 
courted shame and future ruin for present quiet. 
The national conscience rallied feebly at Philadel- 
phia in 1856, and declared slavery a " twin relic ol 
barbarism,' 7 but it subsided, four years later, at Chi- 
cago, into nearly its wonted passiveness, and vowed 
immunity to slavery within the states, with the pro- 
vision affirmed that it should go no further, and. im- 



FORTKESS OF THE REBELLION. 7 

plied, that it should not break up the Union. Mr, 
Lincoln was chosen as the exponent of this timid, 
unearnest, confused national conscience. "We had 
gone down from 1856 to the level of his Whiggish 
conservatism, and it is not from him that we are not 
still groveling in that same slough. The nation, in 
conscience and intelligence, has ascended far above 
it, though its energies have been severely taxed to 
drag him and his Administration along. They, still 
bewildered by the fallacy of their old creeds, have 
seemed determined to cling to the mud and filth of 
our pre-rebellion degradation. We will, however, 
give them this credit, that one of them, at least, 
loathes it ; some of them do not like it ; that they 
deserve commiseration quite as much as censure ; 
but, as a whole, they have kept too close company 
with copperheads and rebels, thinking, perhaps, the 
nearer they were the less they would be hurt, and 
having to learn, by a slow and painful process, that 
force is the best conciliator of the pimps of 
slavery and the enemies of just government. If 
their design had been to maintain a semblance of 
our former abjection to the slave power and make a 
return to it after the war easy, discrimination 
against the slave and his race, would have been the 
way to do it. These few out of many facts have a 
bad look in that direction. If a review of them shall 
be unpleasant to their authors, it is hoped they will 
spare us the pain and cost of their repetition : 

1. Mr. Seward virtually affirmed it at Gettys- 
burg. 2. Their border-state policy — persistently 
patronizing the pro-slavery party in Missouri ; en- 
rolling free negroes, and not slaves, though the law 



8 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

of Congress did not so discriminate, and though 
Judge Bond, of Maryland, in a most able protest, de- 
monstrated that to be jnst the way to perpetuate 
slavery in that state ; and, in general, favoring 
gradual as against immediate emancipation, and en- 
cumbering even that with the slaveholder's favorite 
project of colonizing the free blacks. 3. The neg- 
lect of proper effort to improve the tone of the Su- 
preme Court, and the gratuitous laying of the whole 
anti-slavery action of the G-overnment at its pro- 
slavery feet, as if inviting its negation. 4. The ut- 
ter disregard, for the first year and a half of the war, 
of the rights of the slaves, though they were known 
to be unanimously and intensely loyal, even compell- 
ing our soldiers to the degradation of returning 
them to their rebel masters to be used to defeat our 
armies, and, at the same time, guarding the property 
of those masters. 5. The repulsive treatment, 
even to the present time, not of slaves only, but also 
of free colored men, beginning with the refusal of 
their services in any capacity, then admitting them 
to the menial work of our armies, but denying them 
arms, exposing them, when we abandoned them, as 
we sometimes did, to be shot down by the rebels or 
dragged off into slavery ; declining colored troops 
when offered without cost of enlistment and equip- 
ment ; finally accepting colored men as privates, 
with the express understanding that they could not 
be promoted to office, paying them no bounty and 
but seven dollars a month instead of thirteen paid 
white soldiers, though the President, in his last An- 
nual Message, says, " It is difficult to state that they 
are not as good soldiers as any" — all this saying to 



FORTRESS OF THE RBSELiAoN, * 

the black man, as plainly as actions can, " We do not 
want your aid, and do not mean to give you liberty 
and justice if we can possibly avoid it !" 6. The firnx 
repression of earnest anti-slavery action against the 
rebellion, seen especially in their harsh exclusion of 
those officers who have most severely smitten the re- 
bellion with theweapous of freedom, holding some of 
them to this day under its feet, while their pro-slavery 
rivals are caressed and trusted with the guidance of 
affairs. 7. When, under the resistless pressure of 
public sentiment, they yielded to make the war 
effective and effectual by making it anti-slavery, the 
execution of that policy was committed to its ene- 
mies rather than to its friends, as though soliciting 
its defeat, as they had first to be converted and then 
educated before that policy could have a fair trial. 
8. Recalling Gen. Butler from New Orleans, nobody 
can tell why, unless because his presence there was 
injurious to slavery, and sustaining Gen. Banks 
there, truckling to slavery in opposition to the local 
movement for immediate emancipation and a Free 
State ! 

Is slavery so essential and freedom so dangerous 
to our Republican Government, that the Adminis- 
tration, in waging a war for its maintenance, must 
favor the former and resist the latter ? The atrocity 
of these acts which have no excuse in any law of 
Congress, or want of any law, is greatly palliated, I 
am happy to admit, by other acts of a very different 
character, and the bad are fitfully yielding to the 
better. But why such clumsy blundering into the 
right ? Why this fluttering equivocation ? Honest ? 
Certainly they are ! Just as honest as Charles Sum- 



10 FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 

ner ; and so, perhaps, are Horatio Seymour, and 
Fernando Wood, and Vallandigham. Men may be 
honest, and yet do exceeding wickedly ! The slave 
trade was as horrible in the hands of the pious John 
Newton, as when the civilized nations declared it 
)iracy. We are not discussing a question of moral 
character, but one of political right and sound policy. 
The facts above recited have gone to history. We 
might do great injustice in fixing the personal re- 
sponsibility of their existence. I am content to 
charge the whole fault to the monstrous dogma of 
the constitutionality of slavery in the states. 
Whether that dogma be true or false, it alone has 
made it possible for slavery to attain its audacious 
power, and for the nation to defend itself in so pusil- 
animous and absurd a manner. Believing it, as it 
will be hereafter proved, a dishonorable imputation 
upon the founders of the Government, and an in- 
vention of ambitious demagogues, the question is re- 
spectfully submitted to the American people, Will 
they consider this matter without prejudice, and 
will they redeem their Constitution and Government 
from the ruinous control of this unworthy sen- 
timent ? 

THE DISABLING PLEDGE. 

In the outset of the war, it required no shrewd- 
ness to perceive that our only sure salvation lay 
through the utter destruction of slavery. But Mr. 
Lincoln and his Administration were pledged, will- 
ingly, by the Chicago platform, by resolutions of 
Congress, and by his Inaugural, to certain supposed 
rights of slavery under our constitution ; and they 



FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 11 

had not sufficient genius or courage to take the for- 
feiture of that pledge at the hands of rebels. Their 
adhesion to this sentiment has made them unequal 
to their task — gave us almost unmixed disaster for a 
year and a half, and very slow success since. Feel- 
ing bound to the " double duty" of sparing slavery 
and destroying the rebellion, they have done 
neither. When slavery fired on Fort Sumter, the 
people were ready for its destruction ; when the 
Administration snatched Fremont's sword back from 
its quivering vitals, every loyal heart throbbed with 
indignation. Though the Administration, fearing 
he would do up the work too quickly, and too 
thoroughly, or for some other reasons ! keeps hini 
hidden and inactive ; no other name in the bright con- 
stellation which the night of our distress has reveal- 
ed, is so cherished in the grateful American heart 
as that of John C. Fremont. Modest and patient, 
sage and hero, discreet in Counsel, successful in 
action, with breadth of mind like an empire, provid- 
ing for every detail, anticipating every emergency, 
and every element of his majestic character ener- 
gized with incomparable executive force, he person- 
ifies, as no other man does, the genius of American 
Liberty. His very name the symbol of success, and 
long alliterated with freedom in the aspirations of 
the struggling millions both North and South, it was 
fit that he should make the bold and glorious initi- 
ative of saving the Government, by the destruction 
of its mortal foe, Slavery ! 



12 FORTEESS OP THE REBELLION. 



WHY IS IT SO ? 

Why is the Administration so left-handed ? Why 
has it served freedom in so pro-slavery a manner ? 
Why do our arms succeed in proportion to their re- 
moteness from Washington ? Why does the Admin- 
istration neutralize itself by retaining in its service, 
all over the country, men who jeer at its most effec- 
tive measures against the rebellion ? Not that the 
people need such a policy : they have been con- 
stantly in advance of the Administration, and ready, 
Washington favoring it, to trample out treason and 
slavery in any three months since the war began ; 
nor the semi-traitors North or South : efforts at con- 
ciliation have only made them more hostile, while 
the heavy hand of just authority alone has restrained 
their treasonable machinations. The spring of evil 
has been internal, not external, to the Administra- 
tion — the same in kind but less in force that has 
caused the nation, for thirty years, to foster and 
strengthen its menacing foe, when it should have 
destroyed it ; that held the Buchanan Administra- 
tion passive, sniveling over its impotence. The 
cause that has made the rebels powerful to assail, 
has made the Administration weak to resist : that 
cause, as before stated, is the unworthy view of our 
Constitution that regards it as embracing the hos- 
tile forces of slavery and freedom, and the latter, 
within state lines, subordinated to the former. A 
million manly lives, a billion dollars, distress of 
countless families for indefinite years to come, are 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 13 

but part of the cost to our own nation of that false 
dogma. The moral force of the loyal states has been 
taxed to the utmost to invigorate the Administra- 
tion, puzzled with the complex problem of national 
unity and state slavery, and their material force, to 
cope with the rebellion. Hence the war, which the 
right sentiment, vigorously used, might have pre- 
vented, or closed in a few months, has dragged 
heavily through three years. Under cover of the 
constitutional right of slavery in the states, the re- 
bellion masked its incipient growth. The same sen- 
timent is still its strongest fortress, from which, in 
the Administration, in Congress, in both political 
parties, in the loyal press, it defies the national 
arms. This sentiment shielded nearly half the rebel 
territory from the Emancipation Proclamation, mak- 
ing that a magnificently sonorous document, but 
yielding very small present advantage to the na- 
tional cause, because nearly all the slaves it declared 
free were beyond our reach, while it left in slavery 
those within our control. Was that Proclamation 
made thus impotent, and apparently, not really, in- 
sincere, to avoid imitating the revoked practical 
order of Gen. Fremont, freeing the slaves within his 
lines and turning them to immediate use in extend- 
ing his lines ? With Fremont, our eagle would not 
tolerate slavery in its presence ; with the President, 
it would not tolerate slavery but in its presence, 
where, uqder its wing, the master might torture his 
slave and concoct new treason at his leisure ! Mr. 
Lincoln has been laborious, patient, good-natured, 
and honest — most excellent qualities, but not very 
potent against slave-holders and rebels — these we 



14 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

want, but we want also the clear, quick judgment, 
the iron energy, the resistless will, the all-powerful 
love of impartial freedom and justice of Fremont and 
Butler. It has, without doubt, cost the nation more 
blood and treasure to educate its officials as to the 
nature and rights of slavery, than would have sufficed 
to subdue the rebellion, had their convictions been 
in the beginning what they now are. That they 
were not, is chargeable to the political heresy corn- 
batted in these humble pages — a heresy that has 
doubtless tormented them as much as its fruits have 
chagrined their friends. Had slavery been regarded 
as existing by mere sufferance, without constitu- 
tional protection, its victims would have been 
promptly turned, with crushing weight, against 
the rebellion. 

" SCOTCHED, NOT KILLED." 

Any and all the schemes yet proposed by the Ad- 
ministration and Congress, may only " scotch, not 
kill" the rebellion — prune, not pluck up, the tree 
that has borne the fruit of discord. When slavery 
existed in all the states but one, it was not so strong 
as when existing in only half of them. So, if the 
number of its states shall be reduced to five — the 
five border and slave-rearing states — that may leave 
it sufficient base from which to project new empire 
over freedom. Slavery is not so modest as to be 
waived out of being by civil blandishments. It 
knows how to whine, as well as to swear. If, whip- 
ped in the trial of arms, it shall fawn at our feet, our 
generous forgiveness will know no bounds. We 
shall be quite unlike our former selves, if we do not 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 15 

give back all its states for a promise of peace. It 
will . only be necessary for the Supreme Court to 
say — and which will be in harmony with its past 
suppleness to slavery — that the anti-slavery acts of 
the Government under Mr. Lincoln were mere mili 
tary measures whose force expired with the war, 
and we should be back in the old ruts again on the 
way to another such war. Rebel sympathizers rely 
on that Court for this reaction. The history of poli- 
ticians shows them to be frail as other men, and sug- 
gests the wisdom of removing all possible temptation 
to again imperil our liberties for the votes of slavo- 
crats. Tftis cannot be done, and leave slavery one 
foot of territory under our national banner. The 
nation, for its own life, must not allow its implacable 
foe a single asylum under the fiction of " state sover- 
eignty." It is not safe to wait longer the tardy, 
doubtful action of states in league with him. The 
nation, with its own strong arm, must at once pur- 
sue and slay him at his very altars. Nothing less 
is safe. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

For the many good and noble deeds of the present 
Administration, for its vast improvement upon its 
predecessor, especially for the pure and skillful man- 
agement of the national finances, we feel profoundlv 
grateful. That some of its members were so biased 
or so constitutionally disposed as to disqualify them 
for the work they assumed, and that they should fail 
to perceive their unfitness, is, perhaps, not their 
fault. With even such leaders, liberty has made 
handsome progress, and again vindicated her intrir*- 



16 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

sic superiority over slavery. Their war policy pro- 
vokes a recollection of those honored ancestors who 
were wont, as the stoiw goes, to balance the grist in 
one end of the bag with a stone in the other. Bet- 
ter go to mill so than not at all. But it has not 
occurred to their descendants to erect a monument 
to their sagacity in carrying the stone ! ■ Their 
radical common sense has discovered a safe way of 
dispensing with the conservative stone. There has 
seemed to exist at Washington some evil alchemy 
that has turned the efforts of the nation into ashes — 
some spirit of mischief which the Administration 
could not or would not exorcise. Those Augean 
stables were only partially cleansed when Mr. Bu- 
chanan vacated : the process will need to be re- 
newed at the close of the present term. Freedom 
is entitled to at least one generous Administration 
in her favor. Her persuasive virtues have drawn so 
much of weal for us through grudging hands, and no 
evil having come of it, she should now be entrusted 
with the free reins of government for at least one 
term. Such a concession would be a worthy tribute 
to the soldiers of our magnificent army, who, going 
from their free homes at the North, have become 
more earnest for freedom in the very homes of 
slavery. Most nobly have they defended the Gov- 
ernment, not only in the strife of arms, but also in 
urging the pace of that public sentiment for freedom 
which is more potent than material weapons. The 
martial genius of liberty was never so beautifully 
illustrated as in the countless sympathies between 
our army and its homes ; they alive with activities 
to make it equal to its sublime mission, and its 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 17 

patriotism and heroic bravery even exceeding our 
high expectations. 

The nation owes to the colored race an infinite 
debt of gratitude and service. Our life has been in 
their hands, and they have preserved it ; they have 
been to us as David to Saul. If we fail to requite 
them with full and impartial freedom, an infamy will 
cover our name, in all time to come, deeper and 
blacker than that which now darkens it for our com- 
plicity in their past oppression. They have borne 
themselves with faultless honor ; always true, always 
equal to the occasion ; biding their time with the 
sagacity of statesmen, they have winked at the gross 
indignities of the Government toward them, and 
staked their chances on the logic of the struggle ; 
and its progress justifies their wisdom. In our ex- 
treme peril, forsaken of all our friends, they alone 
stood faithful — four million natural allies, dispersed 
through the enemy's country, and holding in their 
hands his very life, yet bound to us with unconquer- 
able sympathies, and ready to risk every thing to 
help us and ruin him. Confessing them our true, 
essential, and sufficient ally, it is a marvel that we 
could be so penurious, so unfriendly toward them, 
possible only from the tuition of slaveholders. 



18 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 



GRATUITOUS ABASEMENT. 

A few lines on the Constitution will suffice to show 
how gratuitous has been our prostration before the 
slave power. Able and elaborate works are accessi- 
ble to all, abundantly vindicating that noble instru- 
ment from complicity in human slavery : hence we 
need only notice briefly — 

I. The constitution needs no amending. 

Those who have administered the government in 
the interest of slavery, may think criticisms of the 
venerable dead, by way of amending the Constitu- 
tion the\ r gave us, cheaper than political repentance. 
But the only serious defect pertaining to that instru- 
ment on this subject, is in its interpretation, not in 
its letter. Good proof of this is the fact, that the 
engineers of the rebellion at first required amend- 
ments that should secure slavery against Federal 
power — an admission that the Constitution as it is, 
is for freedom and against slavery. Let us hold that 
vantage ground, and magnify and honor the freedom 
features of the Constitution, as we have heretofore 
its fancied features for slavery. A fair and just in 
terpretation, by acknowledged rules, will place it 
squarely on the basis of liberty, without any damag 
ing concessions to slavery. It does not restrain the 
arm of the nation from striking to annihilation anv 



FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 19 

foe, wherever he may lurk, that threatens its life, 
disturbs its peace, or hinders its welfare. It will 
make some suitable amends for our past service to 
slavery, if we now, by virtue of that Constitution 
that has been perverted to oppression, shall crush 
out that oppression and vindicate the founders of the 
government from the foul aspersion of making a Con- 
stitution to legalize human bondage, by establishing 
impartial freedom in all the land by the Constitution 
as they gave it us. We may safely accept the chal- 
lenge of the Rebellion's procurers, " The Constitution 
as it is /" Let the government but be as pure as 
that sublime instrument is, and slavery will not last 
a week. The Court, the Executive, the Congress, 
will each and all find in it not power only but duty 
to strike the fetters from every slave, claimed by 
rebel or loyal master, in faithful or " wayward " 
States. We cannot now afford time to amend the 
Constitution ; an attempt to do it is an admission 
that the government is fatally defective ; it will 
complicate the situation. Yet, if the government 
will not do its duty without, let the Constitution be 
amended. 

II. It gives no license to slavery. 

We should not concede a right to so grave a wrong 
as slavery., unless compelled to it by the plainest 
language. By the simplest rules of law, all possible 
inferences even would be turned against instead of 
for slavery, it being essentially inhuman, unmerci- 
ful ; but we can be very liberal, arid yet carry cur 
suit against slavery in the Constitution. Then — 

1. Slavery, by confession of its friends, is lawless 



20 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

even in the States where it exists. "When the Fugi- 
tive Slave Bill was under discussion in the United 
States Senate, in 1850, Senator Mason, of Virginia, 
objecting to a trial by jury because it implied the 
right to inquire if the fugitive was held to service 
or labor in the State from which he escaped, by the 
laws thereof, said : 

"A trial by jury necessarily carries with it a trial of the whole 
right, and a trial of the right to service will be gone into, according 
to all the forms of the Court, in determining upon any other fact. 
Then, again, it is proposed, as a part of the proof to be adduced at 
the hearing, after the fugitive has been recaptured, that evidence 
shall be brought by the claimant to show that slavery is established 
in the State from which the fugitive has absconded. Now this very 
thing, in 'a recent case in the city of New York, was required by on© 
of the judges of that State, which case attracted the attention of the 
authorities of Maryland, and against which they protested. In that 
case the State judge went so far as to say that the only mode of 
proving it was by reference to the Statute Book. Such proof is re- 
quired in the Senator's amendment; and if he means by this that 
proof shall be brought that slavery is established by existing laws, it 
is impossible to comply with the requisition, for no such law can be 
produced, I apprehend, in any of the Slave States. I am not aware 
that there is a single State in which the institution is established by 
positive law." 

There being, then, on the confession of Senator 
Mason, no law in any of the Slave States by which 
slaves are held, there is nothing in the way of Con- 
gress making them free by law ; they being native- 
born citizens, the Court by rulings, and the Execu- 
tive by force, should maintain their freedom, even 
without law of Congress. 

2. Even admit that slavery is meant in every 
clause where its friends pretend to find it — which is 
far from the truth — their case is not helped. 

(1.) The Representative clause does not *-eauire 



FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 21 

the continued existence of slaver}^ nor forbid its 
abolition by Federal or any other power. 

(2.) The Fugitive clause simply forbids the asylum 
state releasing the fugitive from his legal obligations ; 
does not require either it or the Federal Govern- 
ment to aid in his rendition, nor secure the institu 
tion in State prerogatives. But the framers changed 
the word " servitude " to " service," in this clause, 
for the express purpose that it should not apply to 
slavery. 

(3.) The Importation clause simply restrained 
Congress from prohibiting the introduction of such 
laborers as the States saw fit to import prior to 1808 
— did not forbid Congress nor the Courts enfranchis- 
ing them as soon as they touched our shores ; much 
less does it shield slavery in the States from Federal 
power. This clause clearly implies hostility on the 
part of the Constitution and the Federal Govern- 
ment against slavery, and the power to overthrow 
it. 

(4.) The States " reserved" no right to do wrong. 
They merged their individual independence into the 
national unity, when they adopted the Federal Con- 
stitution, and entered into solemn compact, each with 
all the rest, to make and maintain that Constitution 
the supreme law of the land. They have agreed to 
make its spirit and purpose their own. That Con- 
stitution is the crystalized wisdom of the Revolution 
era, the Declaration of Independence reduced to 
legal form. It is unequivocally for freedom, though 
some of the scales of the old formation still adhere 
to it. A faithful treatise on the " Constitutional 
Guaranties of Slavery in the States/' would be like 



22 FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 

the traveler's chapter on the " Snakes of Iceland," 
whose entire contents were, " There are no Snakes 
in Iceland !" The guaranties are all on the other 
side. 

III. The guaranties of the constitution for 

LIBERTY FORBID THE TOLERATION OF SLAVERY. 

Our history, as well as that of other peoples, has 
demonstrated that slave labor and free labor are so 
incompatible with each other, that they cannot co- 
exist peacefully under the same government. Aware 
of this, the founders of our government planted its 
broad foundations on the enduring basis of free labor, 
and provided that its whole magnificent structure 
should grow to its sublime proportions under the 
hand of intelligent liberty. Mr. Madison, one of the 
framers of the Constitution, embodies in these few 
words, the sentiment of that Convention, and which 
pervades that instrument : 

" It is wrong to admit into the Constitution the idea that there 
can be property in man !" 

1. The Preamble, which is certainly better au- 
thority as to the intention of the framers than any 
subsequent decisions of courts can be, declares 
that the Constitution was ordained to " secure the 
blessings of liberty /" This is the expositive guide for 
Congress, Court, and Executive, in elaborating gov- 
ernment from the Constitution. They are charged 
with the solemn duty to make the blessings of liberty 
secure, not in a part, but in all the United States ; 
not to white men only, but to all men who make this 
country their home. We all know that slavery has 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 23 

made the blessings of liberty extremely insecure, 
without distinction of race : where it exists, the 
white man is but little less a slave than the black 
chattel. Hence the government of the United States 
cannot reach the purpose of the Constitution, so long 
as it tolerates slavery. 

2. The Constitution makes it the express duty of 
the United States to guaranty to every State a " re- 
publican form of government." The institution of 
slavery is as incompatible with a republican form of 
government as a monarchy would be. This clause 
is not permissive, does not grant a privilege ; it is 
imperative, enjoins a duty : " The United States shall 
guaranty /" The people of all the States have made 
the nation the guardian of the several States. If 
any state adopt, retain, or tend toward a government 
anti-republican in form, the nation must overhaul it 
and compel it to be republican. This power— and 
its exercise — is essential to the national safety. With- 
out it, the government might be wholly changed or 
destroyed by piecemeal. When it became apparent 
that any of the States had determined to disappoint 
the hope of the founders of the government, by 
clinging to slavery and making it a political power, 
then should the Federal Government have stepped 
boldly forward, and not only arrested its progress, 
but made its early destruction sure. . The neglect of 
that duty having allowed the slave power to reach 
its natural culmination in civil war, to do by force 
what it could not do by political strategy, will the 
authorities of the United States now rightly inter- 
pret the fearful lesson of the last three years, and 
" guarantv to every State in this Union a republican 



24 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

form of government ?" or, will they still court shame, 
and discord, and ruin, by leaving slavery in the bor- 
der States, and liable to regain the rebel States ? 

B. Congress, being specially charged with the 
power to " provide for the common defence," may 
remove anything that threatens the common safety. 
Slavery has always been regarded as an element of 
national weakness, exposing us to foreign invasion 
and domestic insurrection ; has been vehemently 
threatening the nation's life for thirty years, and is 
now trying to execute that threat ; yet Congress 
hesitates, and spares the assassin vested in fancied 
State privilege. 

4. Congress is also charged with the power to pro- 
vide for the " general welfare." Slavery, making 
labor dishonorable and property insecure, and cor- 
rupting private and public morals, is essentially at 
war with the general welfare ; hence Congress can- 
not provide for the general welfare, and allow slavery 
to exist in any part of the country. Seeking the 
common defence and the general welfare, the power 
of Congress to abolish slavery in the States is as 
clear as its power to build a fort, improve a river or 
harbor, or construct a road in a State. The exercise 
of this power need not wait the explication of the 
status of the rebel States: they must be conquered, 
whatever their status, and this will help do it. 

5. The Amendments. Careful as the Constitution 
is not to legalize slavery, and clear and forcible as it 
is for freedom, yet, lest it might possibly be pervert- 
ed agaiDSt liberty, the government had scarcely gone 
into operation under it before amendments were pro- 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 25 

posed and adopted to make still more secure the 
freedom of speech and the press, and the right of the 
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, 
and effects against unreasonable searches and seiz- 
ures, and providing expressly that no person shall be 
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process 
of law. Slavery makes all these provisions nugatory, 
not to the enslaved only, but also to all who presume 
to speak against their enslavement. Had the Con- 
stitution in the plainest language tolerated or even 
guarantied the existence of slavery, these amend- 
ments would require its abolition : much more since 
the Constitution itself is so emphatically against 
slavery and for freedom. These provisions bind the 
Federal Government in the most solemn and impera- 
tive manner, to protect every person subject to it 
and innocent of crime, regardless of color, caste or 
nationality, in the enjoyment of the blessings of 
liberty. Congress must legislate for it ; the courts 
must rule for it ; the Executive must administer the 
government for it. Failing this, and leaving one 
slave to curse and dishonor our name, the govern- 
ment fails to do what the Constitution requires of it. 
After this concise examination, the case may be 
stated in few words, thus : The Constitution con- 
tains no express provision protecting slavery, the 
limitations of the powers of the government, and the 
reservations of privileges to the States, have no re- 
ference to it ; while the clearly defined duties of the 
government, and the many carefully worded provis- 
ions guarding the rights of personal liberty, forbid 
its toleration : hence the pleaded constitutional ina- 



26 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

bility to abolish slavery in the States, must be regard- 
ed as a mere excuse to cover a disinclination to have 
it done. 

HOW TO DO IT. 

The people can, if they will, remove this disincli- 
nation. Let them say by their ballots, in a manner 
so plain as not to be misunderstood, that the occasion 
for this war must be cut short at once, and its repe- 
tition made impossible, that their rights shall here- 
after be as secure South as North, that the unoccu- 
pied lands of the South as well as of the West shall 
be opened to honorable toil, by the immediate and 
entire abolition of slavery ; then their official ser- 
vants will see new light in their Constitution, and 
cease evading duty by talking of amendments they 
do not want to make. With politicians, elections 
are the only authoritative expositions of the Consti- 
tution. Make the members of the present Congress 
believe that re-election depends on their passing at 
this session a law abolishing slavery in all the States, 
and their constitutional scruples will soon vanish, 
and they will fill the land with campaigning docu- 
ments of the most radical type. It was not defeat, 
but elections, that relieved our brave soldiers from 
the degradation of slave-hounds. Not argument, nor 
squandered treasure, nor wasted life, will lift politi- 
cians from their knees before the slave power ; but 
the people's votes will do it ! If they spring on us 
nominations that will keep us in the road toward na- 
tional imbecility, let the people use their primary 
right to nominate and elect men who will arrest this 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 27 

tendency, and put the government practically on its 
nominal policy of freedom. When the friends of 
liberty show a stronger and more persistent combi- 
nation than the friends of slavery, then, and not till 
then, will our danger be past. 



28 FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 



THE NEXT PRESIDENCY. 

The Presidential canvass cannot be deferred : 
nominations are already being made, and we may 
have three or four candidates in the field. 

1. Let there be free discussion, but without bit- 
terness, and with an inflexible resolve on the part 
of all loyal men, that whoever the successful candi- 
date may be, he shall be inaugurated, and unless 
impeached, generously sustained through his term 
in such policy as he may adopt. 

2. The Executive patronage is so great — the 
President holds so many official dependents at his 
control — it is unsafe to our free institutions to 
entertain claims for a second term. We elect for 
four years, and when that time is out, the incumbent 
cannot by any possibility have any further claim in 
that direction. If his friends insist that he is 
" entitled" to retain power, prudence dictates his 
displacement for that reason, if for no other. 

3. Mr. Lincoln is one among many men who are 
^eminently qualified for that high station. His 

advantage over others on the score of experience is 
counterbalanced by their freedom from obligation 
to make his mistakes appear consistent. As to the 
justice or economy of retaining him to " finish the 
job on hand/ 7 it is well known that he was not the 
author of those measures that have proved success- 
ful in the war, but that he resisted them for a long 
time. If his extreme leniency was serviceable til] 



FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 29 

the cause and nature of the war were developed, the 
time for that quality is long past. By general con- 
sent, we are all ready now for stern, vigorous, prompt 
Executive force, that shall bring the Rebels to their 
knees in the shortest possible time — gifts in which 
Mr. Lincoln's good nature is defective. 

4. If the people shall decide to place the helm of 
state in other hands, we shall see Mr. Lincoln vacate 
office as loyally as ever man did. He will not, as his 
predecessor did, embarrass the accession of his suc- 
cessor ; neither will his interest in and active sup- 
port of the Government then cease. He will recip- 
rocate the patriotic support he has received from 
others. 

5. We shall not retrograde. Either Mr. Lincoln 
will be our next President, or some other man who 
the people think will be more radical and earnest 
than he. The loyal men of the South are intensely 
anti-slavery ; and the loyal people of the North are 
unwilling that the Government shall longer oppose 
them and conserve the cause of our national 
misery. There is but one issue before the Ameri- 
can people, and that is slavery ; and that issue will 
go into the election in this form : Shall Slavery be 
dispatched at once ? or, Shall it be spared awhile 
and killed tenderly ? A short or long war depends 
en the short or long life of Slavery. If that issue is 
allowed to go fairly before the people, their unani- 
mity for the immediate destruction of Slavery will 
astound the temporizers. The nation is thoroughly 
determined that the Government shall live and that 
Slavery shall die 



30 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

6. The two most prominent candidates before the 
public mind, are Mr. Lincoln and Gen. Fremont. 
Mr. Lincoln has the advantage of possession, which, 
at the present time — so enormously has the Execu- 
tive patronage been swollen by the war — is an im- 
mense one. It is also urged in his favor that the 
effect upon the rebels and upon foreign governments 
will be better if we retain him than if we elect any 
other man ; also, that though he has failed in many 
things, another man may do worse ; and still further, 
.that an effort on the part of Republicans to elect any 
other than Mr. Lincoln, may divide the party and 
give the election to the Democrats. As to which — 

(1.) It is worthy of serious consideration, whether, 
to prevent the prostitution of patronage to retain 
power, and to secure more faithful attention to public 
duty, it would not be better to adopt and rigidly 
adhere to the one term principle in reference to the 
Presidency. 

(2.) If the people put the Government in other 
hands in order to secure more vigor in its adminis- 
tration and in its defense against the rebellion, the 
effect will be most salutary, showing that the people 
are determined that this Government shall neither 
be destroyed by treason nor frittered away by Ex- 
ecutive imbecility. 

(3.) Intelligent men are not apt to act " fox in the 
bramble" in their own affairs : they do not hesitate 
to dispose of a poor article for fear of getting a worse 
in its place. I think there is really no danger on 
this point : the people, though they have done it 
more than once heretofore, will not, this time, elect 
a novice in public affairs. The war has thrown upon 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 31 

the canvass a galaxy of splendid men, tried, capable, 
and heroic. From these the people will choose one 
to guide the State for the next four years. They 
will not accept a lower type of man than Mr. Lincoln, 
much less one of doubtful loyalty. 

(4.) But if an effort to put the Government in bet- 
ter hands should result in dividing the Republican 
party, and giving the election to its rival, the fault 
will be theirs who have tried to forestall public 
opinion in favor of the present incumbent. But I 
think there is no danger of that. 

If the question be put on the real value of the two 
men, not one Republican out of a hundred, within 
my acquaintance, except place-holders, will fail to 
say, " Fremont is my first choice" and many Demo- 
crats say the same. "* He is generally regarded as 
eminently fitted to conduct the Executive Depart- 
ment of the Government, especially in such times as 
these. None doubt that his Missouri administration 
was just what was needed there at the time ; and 
that, though public opinion may not then have been 
ready to make so advanced and vigorous a policy 
national, Mr. Lincoln should have allowed him to 
work it out in his own department, in his own way. 
Being commander of a department, he adapted his 
policy to his department, and the nation approves 
its wisdom : if he were President, he would adopt a 
policy as aptly national. 

7. Till the National Conventions meet, it is not 
only the privilege but the duty of every citizen to 
do what he can to make public sentiment what he 
thinks it ought to be, in order that his preference 
may be answered in the election ; but when matters 



32 FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. 

have so far advanced that individualists may jeop- 
ardize the public good, personal choice must be 
merged in the general sentiment, to get the best 
that can be had under the circumstances. 

8. Both the existing parties, having been organ- 
ized before the war, are pervaded, more or less, with 
the old leaven that wrought out the Rebellion ; 
neither of them embraces all the loyal strength of 
the nation. Hence parties and their policies need 
revising, to adjust them to the living issues of the 
times. But parties seldom reform : usually reforma- 
tion can be reached only by the formation of new 
parties. There is, therefore, but little hope that 
either the Baltimore or the Chicago Convention 
will rise to the needs of the times. It is respectfully 
suggested, however, that the "case may be fully and 
honorably met by calling a National Convention, to 
meet subsequent to those at Baltimore and Chicago, 
say about the first of August — and what place more 
suitable than old Independence Hall, Philadelphia? 
— to take such action as shall secure the co-opera- 
tion of all loyal citizens. By that time, better than 
earlier, we can make up our minds who ought to be 
President. Let us, by all means, put our best man, 
whoever he may be, at the head of affairs. 

THE SOVEREIGN POWER. 

The sovereignty of the American people culmin- 
ates not in the President, nor in the Supreme Court, 
but in Congress. The Executive and the Judicial 
departments owe their existence to, and are depend- 
ent for the outlines of their legal formulas of action 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION. ?>3 

upon, the Legislative department. Hence the pro- 
priety of the doctrine urged in these pages, that, 
inasmuch as slavery has come to be generally re- 
garded as a great national evil, inimical to the pros- 
perity and happiness, and endangering the existence 
of the nation, it should be abolished by act of Con- 
gress. It is respectfully submitted that Congress 
alone has jurisdiction to reach the whole case in all 
its bearings. The action of individual states, of the 
Federal Executive, or of the Federal courts, must 
necessarily be partial, not general, and therefore in- 
adequate. Nothing short of a well-considered Act 
of Congress, taking cognizance of all the conflicting 
interests involved, can reach and relieve us from the 
great difficulty of our situation. To question the 
power of Congress to do all that may be necessary 
in the case, is to question the right of the people to 
self-government ; and, in such a case as this, the 
power to act implies the duty to act. 

Until the people are ready to put men in Congress 
who will do their duty on this question, it is useless 
to hope for a safe settlement of our troubles. Mem- 
bers of Congress lay this work at the President's 
door, because they fear their constituents would not 
sustain them in doing it themselves ; and the Presi. 
dent very plausibly excuses himself from it, to avoid 
trenching upon legislative prerogatives. So, be- 
tween them, the work is neglected, and the nation 
suffers 



34 FORTRESS OF THE REBEL? JON. 



PLEDGE FOR FREEDOM. 

As the present Administration has been exceeding- 
ly crippled by having been pledged to " sectional " 
slavery ; so let the next be helped by being pledged 
to full and impartial freedom. Let the platform 
builders have courage to speak the truth in this mat' 
ter. They may be sure that the people are as radi- 
cal as they wish them to be. You will not find a 
man so base or so bold as to say, that he wants slavery 
to survive this war. If politicians were as " ready" 
as the people are, the whole weight of the govern 
ment would be thrown upon the monster to crush it 
to instant annihilation. Then its released victims, 
whether master or slave, may be cared for as prudent 
statesmanship may dictate. Let there be no cheat- 
ing, no covering up, no round about evasions, under 
pretense that "the people are not ready.". .Those 
who make this plea are the only ones who are not 
ready. Not a man will confess himself unready. 
Let each regard others as he would be regarded in 
this respect, and the difficulty is all over ; we shall 
go right to work, as one man, to do what all claim 
to want done. "We have, at immense, cost, parried 
this issue, which the friends of slavery have thrust 
upon us. Let us now accept it, and bury the accursed 
mischief beyond the reach of resurrection. Let this 
task be distinctly laid upon the next Administration. 



FORTRESS OP THE REBELLION. 35 

Let no man be accepted as a candidate who does not 
plainly enunciate this Shibboleth. We cannot afford 
another four years of indecision — should not risk our 
votes on men whose minds are not already made up 
nr.. the srr.at insue of the time — Slavery, or no Slavery! 
After our jong and costly tuition, whoever hesitates, 
whoever has not reach ad the roots in political econo- 
my, or dares not touch them lest he be called " radi- 
cal/ 7 is unworthy the suffrages of freemen. We have 
had politicians in office too long ; they have led us to 
this verge of ruin. Let us now see if we cannot 
elect statesmen who will make justice and right the 
guiding principles of their official conduct — who will 
swear, and then do it, to rescue our government from 
its taint of barbarism. 

But let us put this pledge on better ground than 
" military necessity" and redeemable by a safer power 
than the sword. % Our normal condition is peace. 
Slavery is a great civil w*rong % We degrade* Ourselves 
by confessing that we can eliminate it only by the 
sword. Assert the true character of 'the Federal 
Constitution, and the peaceful power of the govern- 
ment to abolish, slavery in alLthe States, and we shall 
estop the most plausible excuse for a dilatory war, 
and be at liberty to exterminate what may be left oi 
slavery when the war shall close. 

Gracious requital to the fair South for her insensate 
cruelty toward us ! Under Freedom's wand, foreign 
industry and wealth will crowd to her genial and 
ample area ; her noble rivers and her spacious har- 
bors shall be alive with commerce. Interested toil, 
lonorable alike in white or sable hands, shall make 
gardens of her desolations. Science and the gospel 



36 



FORTRESS OF THE REBELLION, 



shall awake genius and skill, and labor, with thought, 
shall evoke from her mountains and her valleys, her 
plains and her rich alluviums a wealth, and construct 
a power infinitely surpassing all her dreams from 
unpaid toil. And every field where sleep our lovely 
fallen, shall echo only to the footsteps of the free, 
whose grateful songs shall consecrate in sweetest 
numbers the memory of those who died that a nation 
so glorious and beneficent might live. 



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